Proper citation of research data is necessary for attribution purposes; it also lays the foundation for published research data to be linked to other publications. Standardized data citation formats are still a work in progress, although a variety of organizations are working to develop guidelines for data citation.

• DataCite is one such organization; they recommend creating a digital object identifier (DOI) to identify data sets.

• MIT has a guide to data citation geared toward data in the social sciences.

• The Digital Curation Centre also provides a helpful data citation guide.

• FORCE 11 has finalized the Declaration of Data Citation Principles which highlights important concepts to consider when crafting a data citation.